The OFFICIAL tech stuff thread
-
Dunno how reliable this is but the Verge is pretty good usually I think (unless I’m mixing them up with another tech news source).
OpenAI board in discussions with Sam Altman to return as CEO
Altman is “ambivalent” and wants governance changes.
-
Three CEOs in three days and probably a bunch more resignations once Altman sets up an alternative.
The board clearly isn’t motivated by this metric but they were recently valued at 80+ billion. Fascinating to watch such a celebrated success story just fall apart.
-
I don’t know but I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a big lawsuit trying to settle how the board must act in such cases? What if they believe course A is dangerous for society but the one that makes most money for it’s shareholders? I think the board was there to placate AI worriers and now they maybe did what they think they were supposed to do, but they weren’t really.
-
Lol Microsoft hired Altman to lead MS’s new advanced AI research team
-
My hot AI take (with a wealth of, but not unlimited, internal knowledge) is that there is a large discrepancy between the teams that are developing AI, and teams that are trying to use it. It’s clear that AI is very cool and makes a lot of things simpler and faster, but we’re at a place where most people have a strong belief that someone else will make a use of it and the providers of the platform will profit. If thousands of engineers across the tech companies cannot figure out what the hell they’d do with this tool, except for to sell it on, is it realistic that the market for them will become so hot and so cornered as to make Google, MS, etc, grow 30% a year for a decade? I doubt it. Notice that the bulk of the investments into AI aren’t into companies that use it to solve problems, but into companies that make more of it. Now without halucinations! Now on your device! Now this, now that.
The real issue at hand is that the tech sector is expecting continuous massive growth (e.g. the ~25% a year it had prior to covid), and that growth just isn’t, IMHO, realistic. As a result people are trying to beat the overall market by throwing money at things they see as the hype of the day. OpenAI was obviously one of them, unsure if this shakeup changes that. There will be others as everyone with money tries to hedge their bets. I believe this money is mostly lost and will cause further harm to the ecosystem.
-
It’s a gold rush for sure, but don’t underestimate the value of whoever wins the race to make it work. Remember Google made a better search engine at the right time and look at them today. AI has the potential to be the next huge automation leap like computers were as well as diverting significant internet attention away from other platforms. Maybe AGI is still 10 years off or whatever but these early examples have people wanting to get in early, and yeah, monetize it to the extent they can along the way.
-
Greedy bastards!
Fucking capitalists are destroying the world!
-
Here is the most important early computer company I never heard of before now……
-
This is crazy. Altman decides to work for M$, the former CEO of Twitch takes over Open AI (like what AI experience does he have?) and most of the company threatens to quit if the board doesn’t resign. Don’t think I have ever seen anything like it.
https://www.wsj.com/tech/openai-employees-threaten-to-quit-unless-board-resigns-bbd5cc86
-
@Gators1 said in The OFFICIAL tech stuff thread:
This is crazy. Altman decides to work for M$, the former CEO of Twitch takes over Open AI (like what AI experience does he have?) and most of the company threatens to quit if the board doesn’t resign. Don’t think I have ever seen anything like it.
https://www.wsj.com/tech/openai-employees-threaten-to-quit-unless-board-resigns-bbd5cc86
Not that crazy. OpenAI is almost 100% people that were poached from FB/Google/MS/Etc and the reason they left was because they wanted to get quickly rich and influential. They don’t have an office in Zurich so none of my close friends work there, but I have enough friends that would have gone there the second they opened an office. And they are really worshipping OpenAI and Altman at the moment.
Now what seems to be happening, from an outsider’s POV, is that Microsoft, the biggest investor, and the reason for the sharp growth of OpenAI’s value, poached the core of OpenAI, while keeping a large chunk of OpenAI’s earnings in the future. In other words, they are stuck in a company which may not be the main driver of AI in 2 quarters, and who’s PPU(stock) price is not very likely to grow if not drop. And comp is going to be > 50% PPU at higher levels.
-
Microsoft is essentially threatening to take OpenAI’s revenue as they are re-selling the APIs (IIRC for cheaper, in some settings), and the threat just got much more real.
-
@tigger said in The OFFICIAL tech stuff thread:
Microsoft is essentially threatening to take OpenAI’s revenue as they are re-selling the APIs (IIRC for cheaper, in some settings), and the threat just got much more real.
Heavens, a for profit corporation funds a startup, shocking that they would act on profit motives.
-
The weird thing though is they invested billions in Open AI and then are pulling the leadership out of it. So if they have faith in Altman, why are they trying to hire him away? Unless they just want to lay claim to him for now and then figure out a way that he ends up running Open AI again? Or maybe they want to just pull the employees out and set them up under the M$ umbrella, but I think a lot of the people there believe in the “open” mission of the company and won’t want to make M$ richer. Still weirder is I have never seen the employees with the power to get the board to fire themselves.
-
@Gators1 said in The OFFICIAL tech stuff thread:
This is crazy. Altman decides to work for M$, the former CEO of Twitch takes over Open AI (like what AI experience does he have?) and most of the company threatens to quit if the board doesn’t resign. Don’t think I have ever seen anything like it.
https://www.wsj.com/tech/openai-employees-threaten-to-quit-unless-board-resigns-bbd5cc86
The threat was made in a letter to the board of directors and among the signees was Ilya Sutskever, the company’s chief scientist and one of the members of the four-person board that voted to oust Altman.
That part is the real wtf to me. Even if you discount the suggestions that he was the initiator of it, they almost certainly needed his vote to shitcan Altman in the first place.
-
Trying to save himself when his little coup failed I guess. I would shitcan him first if Altman comes back.
-
@Gators1 said in The OFFICIAL tech stuff thread:
The weird thing though is they invested billions in Open AI and then are pulling the leadership out of it. So if they have faith in Altman, why are they trying to hire him away? Unless they just want to lay claim to him for now and then figure out a way that he ends up running Open AI again? Or maybe they want to just pull the employees out and set them up under the M$ umbrella, but I think a lot of the people there believe in the “open” mission of the company and won’t want to make M$ richer. Still weirder is I have never seen the employees with the power to get the board to fire themselves.
I think they can get a lot of employees from OpenAI. I don’t think bulk of the employees is in for AI safety. They are there because they can execute much faster than they did, and have higher comp.
-
According to some comp number online, OpenAI has roughly double salaries of the rest, with a bulk of it being in PPUs.
-
@tigger this was in the news a week ago:
OpenAI Attracts Top Google AI Talent with Lucrative $10 Million Pay Packages
-
Even though I would be universally hated, I wish I knew math.
-
Can you smart people here summarize for me who are the good/bad guys in this story? I’m kinda too lazy for this one.
Datapoint - Wikipedia
